


Carthago Delenda Est

by HarveyWallbanger



Category: Fringe
Genre: Gen, Light Bondage, M/M, gen with a creamy slash center, metaphors and shit, vague and awkward sex, violence that- while less intense than the show's- may still be disturbing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-15
Updated: 2012-03-15
Packaged: 2017-11-02 00:13:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/362867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HarveyWallbanger/pseuds/HarveyWallbanger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a relationship like dark matter: effect without a cause that can be directly observed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Carthago Delenda Est

**Author's Note:**

> I am not involved with the creation of Fringe, and this school is not involved with the creation of Fringe. I'm certainly not being paid for this. Written around the time of "The Day We Died"; now, alas, totally Jossed.

He knows that none of this is real. He's asleep at midday, the sun on his face, feebly clawing through dreams made sticky and luminous by the sun's radiance. The air is thin on his skin, though it chugs sluggishly through his respiratory system, and far clearer than he remembers it ever being, even in his childhood. He's struck again and again by the verdancy of the place. Trees line both sides of the streets he travels. The atrium in the center of the hotel where he's been installed is filled with great clumps of vegetation, undifferentiated, sinister and maddeningly beautiful. There's even a plant in the office they've given him, some species of orchid he doesn't recall having seen before; subtle, elegant, vaguely disturbing. No matter what he's doing, or where he is in the office, it's lodged in the periphery of his vision, like an afterimage. He examines it with a magnifying glass, probes it thus, though he isn't sure precisely for what he's looking. Putting down the magnifying glass, he brushes the back of his hand against its inflorescence. He does the same with his fingertips, before pinching its terminus between his fingers and twisting it off.

The other one says something that makes no sense concerning a topic of no importance, and Walter hits him. That man is always saying things that make no sense concerning topics of no importance, though, and Walter isn't sure why this instance, in particular, angered him. Ten minutes later, after they've been separated- Walter sent from the lab like a misbehaving boy, and the other one made by Astrid to sit down and tilt back his head, even as he protests that that's not the way to stop a nosebleed- Walter can't recall what it was the other man had said.  
After that, the lab is divided in two. Each side gets another assistant, to cross the invisible line of boundary, but over time, they are needed for other tasks, so one side is simply given the same resources and equipment as the other. Gradually, the two labs within the lab become mirror images of one another, like a cell replicating before it divides.

He's traveled backward through time. Disease and injury are rampant without modern medical technology to treat them. Humanity made it to the moon, but no further. People scratch at endless sheets of paper with pens that either belch clots of ink or produce inkless trenches. He imagines all of the paper, when it is inevitably discarded, forming a conglomeration like a great hairball, impenetrably tangled; decaying, but never completely dissolving.

There is blonde Agent Dunham, for whom he feels revulsion tempered by a fascination and an envy he cannot place. There is red-haired Agent Dunham, whom he privately thinks of as 'Olivia', for whom he feels competing wariness and warmth. There is Agent Broyles, checking on them even though he receives regular reports, watching through the glass outer wall or from just outside of the entrance of the lab. There is Astrid, whom he finds diffident and indulgent, but diligent. There is Agent Farnsworth, who has always been an excellent resource. There is Nina Sharp, solicitous and inscrutable. There is Brandon, who rushes forward and extends himself, physically and verbally. There is Agent Fayette, who speaks only when spoken to, which others mistake for either shyness or deference. As they work, either Brandon or Agent Fayette will occasionally look for and locate the other, as though he were a variable in an experiment to be tracked and registered.   
There is the other one. The other man. The other Walter. The other him. Out of utility as opposed to a show of good faith, he's sure, no part of Massive Dynamic is closed to Walter. Though it takes considerable searching down some of the more recondite corridors of Massive Dynamic's filing system, Walter eventually finds the file on the other one. For reasons irritatingly absent from the report, he's had parts of his brain removed, which explains some of his behavior. The rest, Walter puts down to the effects of long-term drug-abuse, and the man being personally objectionable.  
Walter hates him. He hates him in a way that evokes personal insults, and grudges so old that they've become mummified, even though all the other Walter Bishop has ever been to him, to spite what he's done, is another scientist. In a way, he's a rival, but theirs is a rivalry chilled and depersonalized by distance. This hatred, hot and aching like an infected wound, has no place in the scenario, or in Walter, himself. All the same, it's strangely comforting.

He's dreaming. Though he's aware of his dreaming state, the narrative is fractured, as though he were flipping through a book, reading passages at random. He's watching himself do things that seem familiar, but he knows he never did. He's sobbing into his hands, in a room he doesn't recognize, yet he knows is in a house he owns. He's in the same room, rushing toward a liquor cabinet. He's drinking. He continues drinking as the darkness outside of the windows pales; turns gray, then blue, then green, then gold.  
He wakes; the perfume of whiskey is as thick as suede in his nose and mouth. The desire to drink hits him like a hunger pang. It's odd; he's never really been much of a drinker.

Some days, he isn't even sure how he got there- to the other world. Thinking about it is physically painful. He takes a couple of aspirins, curses this world's inferior medical technology, and again reads the documentation on Massive Dynamic's research into memory. Bishop Dynamic did extensive work in this field, to the point where they were able to create and destroy memories in experimental subjects. He knows that the findings could be applied to amnesia. It's just a matter of getting from the conclusion of one experiment to the formation of the hypothesis of the next. It's that which he can't seem to do.  
It's like being in a unlit room, and knowing that the light switch must be found, knowing its general location, but being unable to negotiate the dark. He knows why he's there, but how he got there is unclear. The machine. Who turned it on? How did they turn it on? He must have figured out how to do it; that's the logical conclusion to draw. He, or the other Walter Bishop. Either way, it is a fact, sturdy and safe: Walter Bishop turned on the machine. No one else could have done so.

He's watching himself, from across the room. It produces a sensation somewhere between morbid curiosity and self-pity. How could that other man be him? Their basic circumstances, their inherent potential were more or less the same. Yet, the other Walter somehow wandered into his fate. He must have wandered, drifted, in order to end up so broken as to be unrecognizable to himself. A smashed instrument. An aberration. A deviant version of the primary form- Walter, himself. It's satisfying, to think of it that way; it has an elegant, an instructive quality. The other Walter tampered with reality, so reality tampered with him.

No matter how a dream begins, these days, it always develops into the same scene. There is always a child, a boy, in peril- amorphous but absolute- and Walter has to save him. Somehow, Walter always fails. Sometimes, he's physically prevented from saving the boy, by the heightened inertia of the dream world. Sometimes, he finds himself lost in an unknown landscape, waylaid by strange people with absurd requests. Sometimes, he merely forgets about the boy until it's too late. In this last case, he awakes sobbing, dry-eyed; not so much crying as automatically and compulsively heaving.  
What little he knows about dream analysis, he picked up reading his mother's books as a boy. A Freudian would say that the child represents a secret wish, and that the obstructions preventing Walter from saving him represent Walter's own subconscious sabotaging of his efforts. A Jungian would say that the child represents an archetypal child, and therefore, probably Walter, himself. It isn't him, though, or a symbolic representation; it's a very specific boy. Walter knows him. Or knew him, once, anyway.

After a loud argument which climaxes in the other one casting to the floor several pieces of glassware, and Walter barely restraining himself from hitting him again, they're initially separated. The other one is taken away, to be spoken to by Astrid, Agent Dunham, and Agent Broyles. While Walter feigns working on calculations, he hears the other man continue to rage, and eventually dissolve into sobs. Agent Dunham returns, and in her robotic parody of sympathy, says, "I think that you should talk to him."  
Curiosity overcomes disgust and annoyance, and Walter goes with her to the other man's office. Agent Broyles has already left, but Astrid is standing next to the other one, a hand on his shoulder, which he clutches. She gives his hand a squeeze before releasing it, then looks from one of them to the other and follows Agent Dunham out of the room.  
Walter can't think of anything to say, so he just glares at him, the other man. Himself. A pathetic forgery in clothing that looks as though it doesn't belong to him. Finally, Walter says, "I'm not going to talk to you if you start crying again."  
The other man sniffs. "I think I've finished. Do you want to sit down?"  
"No," he says, even though his back aches.  
"Can I offer you something to drink?" Before Walter can answer, the other man opens the top drawer of his desk and takes out a flask and a glass.  
He frowns and says stiffly, "We're working."  
"You're quite right," the other man says with a sad smile, pouring a couple of inches of brown liquor into the glass. He drinks.  
"Why did you want to speak to me?" Walter sighs.  
"Lately, I've had the strongest craving for crepes- have you ever had crepes?"  
He doesn't answer.  
"Crepes suzette," the other man says, around the glass.  
"I hate you. You know that, don't you?"  
The other one looks down. Walter can almost feel the motion as it's completed, in his own eyes, and head, and neck.  
"Yes, I do. I just wish that I could remember why."  
Walter laughs. "You're responsible for the systematic degradation of my reality. Isn't that enough?"  
The other man shakes his head. "No, there's something else. Have you ever known that there's the perfect word for something, but you can't remember what it is?"  
Walter frowns. "Yes."  
"Only, the word doesn't actually exist- not in any of the languages you speak, anyway."  
"What's your point?"  
The other one leans forward; the chair creaks. "That there's a reason why you hate me, aside from the destruction I've wrought, but not only can neither of us remember what it is, but we cannot even conceive of what it could be."  
"That's nonsense. I couldn't hate you without a reason."  
"You have a reason; you just can't begin to imagine it."  
"How could-" he shakes his head, "I don't know why I'm having this conversation with you. Even at the best of times, you make sense only by accident, and now you're emotionally unstable, and drunk."  
The other man continues, as though Walter hadn't spoken. "We have to figure out the reason, or at least a way to figure out the reason."  
"Why? Knowing why I hate you isn't going to make me hate you less."  
"But doesn't it hurt? Knowing that there's a part of you, a part of your life missing, and being unable to even try to seek it out?"  
"But that's the way that you feel all the time. Why does this, in particular, matter so much to you?"  
The other Walter pours some more liquor into his glass, and drinks. Softly, he says, "I just want to be forgiven."

Of the time surrounding his exit from the office, Walter doesn't clearly remember very much. The door hitting the opposite wall as he threw it open. The sound of breaking glass; probably the other one dropping his drink. Some little lab assistant peering at Walter from behind glasses and a stack of files, then not just looking away but closing up, like a camera's lens.  
Walter goes back to the hotel room, and spends an indeterminate period of time pacing and smoking on the balcony, like he can stamp or exhale out this fitful anger, twisting in his gut like a fist flexing open and closed. The shame of it, of knowing that it's only any one of a billion trivial occurrences that separates him from that ruined creature, with his crutches and fits and whims. And, yet, Walter is the one at a disadvantage, because he's in the other man's territory, both literally and figuratively. This world- Massive Dynamic- the shadowland of amnesia- all belong to the other Walter.  
"Doppelganger," Walter says into the breeze as it pushes the smoke he exhales back into his face.

This time, when the other one breaks down, Walter goes to speak to him without first being asked by Agent Dunham.  
"You have to pull yourself together," he tells him, his other self.  
The other one sighs wetly, "I just get overwhelmed, sometimes."  
"Have you tried hypnosis?"  
"Usually, I eat something and take a nap, and I'm fine."  
"No, to figure out what it is that's missing."  
The other one laughs. "You can't recover what just isn't there."  
"Perhaps some clue could be found."  
"It should be you who goes under, then. You have the stronger emotional connection."  
"But it's your fault."  
"I know that, but if I were able to remember what I'd done, we wouldn't be here, right now, talking about it, would we?"

"Listen to my voice, let it be your anchor. Wherever you go, you can always come back to this point, through the sound of my voice. Where are you, now?"  
He's in a house he's never seen before, yet he knows that it's his house. "I'm in a house." It's dark and cold, and everything feels muted and inert. He's moving slowly, too slowly, through space, navigating by muscle memory. Someone has been there, who wasn't supposed to be.  
"What's happening?"  
"There was an intruder."  
"Can you see him?"  
"No."  
"How do you know he was there?"  
"I just know."  
"Is he still there?"  
"I don't know."  
"I want you to go from room to room, and tell me what you observe."  
"I can hardly see anything. It's too dark."  
"Do you hear anything, smell anything?"  
"There's the faintest trace of ozone."  
"Good. What caused it?"  
He grinds out the words, "I don't know." He does know, but he's separated from the knowledge, and its location is remote; his movements are hindered, as they often are in his dreams, and he can't even begin to try to reach what he seeks.  
"Continue walking through the house. Do you see any closed doors?"  
Though it hurts to do so, he forces his vision to focus. "Yes. There's a closed door at the end of the corridor."  
"Good. Walk toward it."  
With effort that makes his muscles ache, he trudges toward the door. The closer he gets to it, the darker the already-dim corridor becomes, until he can no longer see anything. The darkness is thick, consuming, and he has to drag himself across the wall to remain upright and moving. The door, he knows, however, is always before him. He can feel, even before he reaches out for it, the handle.  
"I'm here."  
"When you open the door, everything will be revealed to you. Open the door."  
He turns the handle.

"That was an even bigger waste of time than I'd thought possible."  
"We'll have to try again."  
"No, we won't. Lives are at stake, and I'm not spending another moment on this."  
"Just one more session."  
"No. If you want to root through someone's subconscious, root through your own. There's obviously nothing in mine pertaining to this matter."  
"But you saw your own reflection, when you opened the door. That has to be significant."  
"No, it doesn't. You're convincing yourself that it's significant precisely because it's so transparent and formulaic; it's standard dream imagery: the doppelganger, the second, sinister self. I have to go. I have work to do."

Something has been stolen; that much is obvious. Momentarily, it occurs to him that he might be the thief, walking through this house which he knows but doesn't recognize. That notion, however, inspires a sensation of wrongness like unto physical pain. Something has been stolen from him, from his house. With slightly greater ease than before, he makes his way to the end of the corridor. He opens the door.

He opens the door. It isn't his reflection, though. He holds up a hand, and the other Walter remains motionless. It isn't an image, either, but another man, in three dimensions. Another Walter.

"It's you. At first, I didn't realize it, precisely because it was so simple. But it's you. You took something from me. What did you take from me?"  
"I can't remember," the other Walter says, not sad or apologetic this time, but angry. As angry as Walter is. "How many times do I have to tell you?"  
"You have to know. Somewhere, in that addled brain of yours, you have the information." He's clutching the other Walter's shirt, though he's not sure when he grabbed onto it.  
"No, I don't. It's gone. The memories are gone." Now, the other Walter is holding onto him, their wrists crisscrossing like sections of a double helix.  
Walter can't argue with that, with bare reality, so he lets go of the other man, pushes him away. "You're useless."  
"So are you. There's a reason why I can't remember. You just aren't strong enough."  
It's a half-hearted blow; not a rebuke, but an invitation. Walter gets what he wanted, an answering blow. Walter's lip is bleeding, and the other man's jaw is reddening. After a moment's pause, they come together again, entangled and striking each other at random. They're oddly quiet, so when they collide with the other Walter's desk, causing a bright burst of sudden sound, they both start. Walter's on top of the other man, Walter's hands going white, wrapped in the material of his shirt. A couple of centimeters, and Walter's hands would be around his neck. If it's occurred to Walter, it's occurred to him, too; as if to confirm it, the other man glances down at Walter's hands. Reflexively, Walter loosens his grip, though he really wants to tighten it. To move his hands up the couple of centimeters, and tighten his grip, and finally find some sort of resolution.  
"If you kill me, you'll never know."  
"I'm never going to know, anyway."  
"Maybe you aren't supposed to know. Maybe you're just supposed to look for the answer. Maybe we both are."  
"Stop trying to be philosophical; you're not very good at it." He lets go of the other man, stands up. There's blood on his shirt, and nearly every part of his body hurts.   
The other man brings himself up, and leans on his elbows. "For whatever it was that I did, I'm sorry, sorrier than you can imagine."  
"You can't be sorry if you don't know what you did." Walter pokes a finger under his upper lip, and tentatively runs it over his gum line.  
"I know that it was wrong, so wrong that we can't even find a word for it. All I can do, though, is try to help you. That's what I have to do."  
Walter makes a face  
"You don't have to like it, but the fact remains that we can't do this without each other. It's like we're two halves of the same brain."  
"You're high, aren't you?"  
The other Walter smiles. "Not as much as you might think."

He can't forgive the other Walter. He doesn't even try. He can work with him, but no matter how many times they seem to come to an understanding, Walter still loathes him, in a way that's knit into his very bones. He is, he realizes, jealous, though he can't understand why. It's always there, the sense of having been one-upped. Perhaps that's the thing that the other man stole from him. As horrifying as the results might have been, he still achieved something that Walter could not. That, Walter can't forgive.

This time, he does get his hands around the other Walter's neck. He doesn't go as far as applying pressure, but the other man's eyes are already open wide and his mouth is gaping. Walter knows that his own face bears the same expression. He feels hands gripping his shoulders, and legs tangled with his own, but it doesn't really register. He's numb, worn smooth by adrenaline. He barely feels it when he leans forward and crushes his mouth against that of the other Walter. The other man makes a rich, satisfied sound, as though he'd been expecting this, and Walter bites his lower lip. He knows that the other Walter tastes blood when Walter kisses him again.  
"I thought you'd be like that," the other man says.  
"Like what?" Walter tries to keep his voice even, but his heart is pounding, and his breath stutters out of him.  
"Rough," says the other Walter.  
"If you didn't like it, you'd stop me." He kisses the other man's jaw, looking for the spot where his fist made contact a few days earlier. "You know your own weaknesses, so you know mine. If you wanted to, you could hurt me more effectively than anyone else in the world. So, you like this." To punctuate the statement, he bites the other man on the neck; not hard enough to draw blood, but hard enough to hurt. His answer is a jagged exhalation, and the other man's hands tighten on his shoulders, pulling him up for another kiss on the mouth.  
When they separate to breathe, the other Walter says, "You can hold me down."  
Walter's caught off-guard, but tries not to show it. "Like this?" Walter pulls his wrists up to the level of his head, and leans on them.  
"That's good," the other man murmurs.  
"No. My arms are going to get tired."  
"You could tie me up."  
"Using what?"  
"Your tie?"  
"I'll think of something."   
He strips the other Walter, who is content to be pushed and pulled and positioned, then ties his wrists together behind his back with a cloth tape measure that Walter found in his desk.  
"What are you doing?" the other man asks.  
"I'm examining you. Do you have any scars?"  
"You know that I do."  
"The back of your head, correct?"  
The other man nods.  
Apart from the surgical scar, a raised line of spectral white, there is only small mark on the other man's left elbow, from falling off of a bicycle that Walter never rode down a street Walter has never seen. The accumulated discrepancies amount to so little that they're observably identical. Somehow, it's a disappointment.   
If Walter were even a little bit unreasonable, he might begin to believe that the fall from the bicycle is the origin of the differences between them. Walter sucks at the scar, fifty years old and barely visible, then worries at it, irritated at himself for thinking of such nonsense, even to dismiss it. Irritated at the other Walter for existing,. He's beginning to feel like one long streak of irritation, fitful and spiky. His hands on the other man are grasping, hard; his mouth feels like it's all teeth.  
"Kiss me again," the other Walter says, and Walter complies without thinking, struggling to move them again into a supine position upon the desk. The other Walter groans slightly; Walter pushes against him, and makes him do it again.  
"You like that?" Walter says against the other man's ear.  
"My wrist is bent at an odd angle," the other man says sheepishly, wriggling a bit until he's more comfortable. "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is only sporadically functional."  
He replies without actually considering what he's saying. "My experience in this area isn't extensive, so that's of some comfort to me." As soon as the words come out, he feels heat rising from his face and throat.  
"I can't promise that it will yield positive results, but you could try using your own preferences as a starting point."  
"My own preferences are usually more feminine in nature."  
"But how do you like to be touched? What feels good to you?"  
"I'm usually doing the touching."  
"Touch me, then."  
He kisses the other Walter, with a tentativeness that surprises him. It's as though all the cruelty's been drained from him- possibly because that's what the other man expects, wants from him. It feels good, though, Walter finds, to withhold. To defy expectations. In its way, it's just as shattering. It creates a feeling of satisfaction worth even the weakness in Walter's knees, and the ache in his jaw.  
The other man breathes out, full and shaky. "Now, what are we going to do about you?"  
Walter smiles.

They've moved to the couch in the other Walter's office. Walter is dressed, apart from his jacket and tie, and the other Walter has put his shirt back on. They're sitting, exhausted, heads resting against each other, in silence. Then, one of them speaks.  
"Why did you do it?"  
"Isn't that obvious?"  
"To see if you could."  
"No."  
"Because you knew that you could."  
"Yes."


End file.
